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President Barack Obama has agreed to put new solar panels on the White House roof for the first time since President Ronald Reagan withdrew them in 1986. Does the move allow the Obama administration to show its environmental cred without pushing climate change legislation though Congress? Do the solar panels invite unfavorable comparisons with Jimmy Carter's presidency?

Also, does the White House's willingness to reinstate the panels after a near quarter-century absence reflect a broader public consensus about the existence of man-made global warming? Put another way, will a future president be able to pull them down without stirring public ire?

Putting solar on the White House is good for America. Actually, it’s great for America. But don’t take my word for it: More than 90 percent of Americans support greater use of solar power. Americans are divided on so many issues, but they agree on using clean, reliable solar power.

By installing solar panels on the White House, President Obama is making more than a symbolic gesture. He’s demonstrating solar’s potential to power our nation, save taxpayers money and create clean energy now. He joins hundreds of thousands of Americans, including conservatives like former Reagan Secretary of State George Schulz and former CIA director James Woolsey, who put solar on their rooftops and saved money, secured our energy independence and left a better planet for their children.

His decision makes perfect sense. Going solar provides a one-two punch for economic recovery. Going solar is a long-term hedge against unstable fossil fuel prices. And, it’s a wise investment. As a solar homeowner myself, I can attest that my solar energy system has outperformed my 401(k) over the past few years.

Homeowners aren’t the only ones making investments by going solar. Commercial property owners like FedEx, Kohl’s and Johnson & Johnson have invested in solar as utilities. And this push for renewable energy has grown the solar industry, allowing us to create good-paying jobs right here in the U.S. Even during a recession, our industry created more than 17,000 jobs last year. Growth rates in 2010 are already higher.

But solar isn’t just an investment to save money and create jobs. It is an investment in our planet’s future. Solar is an environmentally responsible, non-carbon way to create energy. It is also a secure choice to make our country more energy independent.

We are excited about where our industry can go in the years ahead. But how much we can grow in the near-term is dependent on having smart policies that allow solar to reach its job-creating potential.

What we ask for is simple: a level playing field so that today’s solar technology can compete with the dirty fossil fuels of the past. For far too long, our government has favored toxic energy, like coal and oil, over renewable sources, like solar.

We look forward to working with the president and Congress on an extension of the job-generating, successful Treasury Grant Program for solar. This investment has helped solar create thousands of jobs in more than 40 states. We also seek stronger incentives to make investing in America more attractive for solar manufacturers . Doing so is a wise step to bolster America’s competitiveness and lagging manufacturing sector.

The solar industry is proud that the 44th president has put solar in the spotlight by choosing to put it on the People’s House. We look forward to the panels providing clean, reliable power for the 45th president, the 46th, 47th and beyond.

I applaud President Obama's plan to install new solar panels on the White House but I hope they are more than window dressing.

In 2011, the president will have to push Congress harder than he did last year to reform the energy system. Republican congressional strength will be greater but so will the danger from global warming. The president can not fiddle around while the earth burns.

President Obama is restoring the solar energy panels that have been absent from the White House since President Reagan took them down after he replaced Jimmy Carter. Whenever I think of Ronald Reagan in the context of environmental policy, I remember his war against trees. As governor of California in the late 1960s, he opposed the expansion of Redwood National Park by saying "A tree is a tree. How many more to you have to look at?" In 1981, President Reagan said that "trees cause more pollution than automobiles do." An environmental activist responded by dressing up as a tree and holding a sign that read "Stop me before I kill again."

Let's just hope, there's lots of sun shining on the White House next year as a dark cloud looms over Capitol Hill.

President Obama is apparently attempting to make a "statement" with his decision to install solar panels on the roof of the White House. Were President Obama an average American citizen living in D.C., he would have no incentive to take his household off of the available electricity and spend multiples more for his power for the next 15 or 20 years.

Of course he is not going to disconnect from city power because of the simple fact that many days in the capital are cloudy and solar does not produce electricity on cloudy days. Neither is he going to personally pay for the expensive installation of solar panels because you are paying for them with your tax dollars. How much more costly is solar energy than it is from the coal fired plants which, yes, do emit a colorless, odorless, tasteless, gas named carbon dioxide?

A study reported by the non-profit Heartland Institute indicates that solar-derived electricity is five to eight times more expensive than coal fired electricity unless you receive a subsidy, which again, you pay for with your tax dollars. Natural gas fired plants produce electricity three to six times less expensively that do the solar systems.

Sadly, all of this disregard for what you may be facing in your future energy costs, if legislation such as a cap and trade bill gets passed, is based on the empirically unjustifiable hypothesis that the "critical for life" carbon dioxide is a major cause of climate change. Americans are being driven away from conventional, cheap and reliable energy just in case the catastrophes projected in man-made climate models might be right.

A simple review of Earth's past climates, during various levels of atmospheric CO2, clearly shows that the hypothesis that CO2 is a major driver of climate change is false. Crank in what the higher energy costs will do to increase the costs of transportation fuels, food, homebuilding products, etc., and you see that the poor will suffer most and that the nation will become much less competitive internationally.

But when a president is surrounded by advisers that have a history of being publicly "pegged" to an extreme view of the impact of carbon dioxide, the result is predictable despite more and more empirical evidence staring them in the face.

As to the next inhabitant of the White House, he or she will wisely leave the solar panels in place so as to escape the ire of the media.

Putting solar panels on the White House sends a message that renewable energy is right for the United States. President Obama is setting an example that shows he understands the risks of climate change as well as the opportunities of a clean energy economy.

The military is moving in this direction as well – just this week Navy Secretary Ray Mabus explained his rationale for the Navy’s ambitious renewable energy goal in the New York Times, saying “Fossil fuel is the No. 1 thing we import to Afghanistan, and guarding that fuel is keeping the troops from doing what they were sent there to do, to fight or engage local people.”

Whether for national security, economic, or environmental reasons, switching to renewable energy makes sense. The switch may begin at home, and solar panels on the White House is an important symbol from the president of the United States.

However, it’s just that: a symbol. What’s needed to truly drive investment in clean energy in the United States are policies that make renewable energy competitive with fossil fuels, like a price on carbon, combined with strong complementary policies such as renewable and energy efficiency standards. In addition, it is important to invest in RD&D to drive innovation in clean energy so that America can catch up with other countries in the race to a low-carbon energy economy. Until Congress acts, we’ll be stuck with 20th century dirty energy.

Let me rephrase this question: Did Ronald Reagan kill a business with the potential to dwarf nuclear power capacity, reduce dependence on fossil fuels, and provide thousands of U.S. jobs? By ripping the solar thermal (aka solar hot water) panels off the White House roof in the mid 80's to make a "statement" against alternative energy - and for oil - Reagan was instrumental in killing the U.S. solar thermal industry. The Virginia company that made the panels was apparently out of business by 1991.

Not surprisingly, the leader in solar thermal today is China, where use of the cheap rooftop water heaters grew six times between 2002 and 2008. Now, in 2010, China has estimated that solar water heaters may replace the need for 40 nuclear plants. Worldwide, solar water heaters could supply the equivalent of 140 nukes. But, sigh, we don't have any of that industry, and hardly any of those water heaters. Instead, the enterprising entrepreneur Huang Ming is located in China, which is increasingly the spot for capitalists with bright, carbon saving ideas. (For numbers, see here.)

The White House has always been a stage where American presidents talk about the future of energy. Richard Nixon famously acknowledged that we had to change our ways when he unplugged the White House Christmas tree during the 1973 Oil Crisis. Carter's installation of solar thermal was his optimistic down payment on future industries: "one of the greatest and most exciting adventures ever undertaken by the American people," which he hoped would empower us to get 20 percent of our energy from alternative sources by 2000.

But sadly, after Reagan ripped the (functioning) panels off, the U.S. lost industries including solar and wind, wasted decades, and has spent trillions importing oil. Today, solar itself is no longer a dramatic statement. Lots of people have solar panels - some on their houses, and some on their walkway lights or their calculators - and most are made elsewhere.

Obama's issue is not to show that he's not Carter, but that he's not going to let a Reagan repeat happen. What Obama needs to do is reassure the thousands of alternative energy companies who have tried to build technology and jobs during the recession, and who have received billions in stimulus funding, that he will build a legacy no Reagan-wannabe can dismantle. He has not so far passed greenhouse gas legislation, got a price on carbon, or even passed energy legislation with a renewable energy standard for utilities - any and all of which will be necessary to build a permanent free market in alternative energy.

We need a real market for alternative energy so that it gets cheaper and competes in the marketplace on the basis of performance rather than in its skill in getting investors or government grants. If Obama fails to start that market, we will have deja vu all over again - foreign companies will buy up promising U.S. startups that the taxpayer helped fund.

It seems entirely appropriate that the solar panels - with all of their promise and threat - should hang over Obama's head as he works.

David BiespielAmerican poet, founder of The Attic: A Haven for Writers :

Jimmy Carter had them installed during the energy crises of the late 1970s, but Ronald Reagan lived with the solar panels above the White House far longer than Jimmy Carter did, so why not link Obama to Reagan, and not Carter. The panels were only removed when the White House roof underwent repairs. Here's the worst part: Not only did the White House not restore the panels, the Reagan administration also cut tax credits for Americans that purchased solar energy systems. Another tax Ronald Reagan didn't cut.

As for President Obama, there's nothing radical or outside the mainstream today regarding installing alternative energy systems. Two of the most solidly Republican states in the union, Oklahoma and Texas, also produce the nation's largest amount of wind-produced energy. Yes, the Longhorns and the Sooners are greenies. As was Ronald Reagan for five of his eight years in the White House. The Obama-Carter analogy is inapt.

Putting solar panels on the White House reminds me of a friend who owns four hybrid cars and 8,000 square feet of socially responsible vacation home, which includes nearly $500,000 of geothermal heating and cooling systems, solar panels, batteries and organic gardens (for, uh, herbs). Both projects contain so much symbolic dissonance that astrophysicists should be studying them as possible portals to a separate liberal reality.

Photovoltaic systems of the type being installed on the White House require at least a 2,000 percent subsidy compared to clean coal, and a roughly 600 percent subsidy compared to new nuclear technologies. Even allowing for breakthroughs in solar panel and battery efficiency and production economies of scale, that's a LOT of subsidy. Obama wants to tax the upper middle class in order to pay for similar green technologies, but this is a fiscally unsustainable ploy and an economically ineffectual substitute for the carbon tax that Obama has vowed not to impose on the middle class.

With every successive green publicity stunt that Obama initiates, the hypocrisy of his energy policy becomes more apparent. Either he has the courage of his global warming convictions or he does not. At least Jimmy Carter was willing to suffer in a chilly Oval Office.

Taxing people who don't vote for him in order to erect a green Potemkin village is wasteful, unfair and distracting from the real energy and national security task at hand: allowing homegrown energy from all sources to compete on a level playing field for the affection of price-aware consumers.

Obama is morphing into Jimmy Carter more everyday. Lets see, Carter had Americans held hostage in Iran and Obama does too. Carter faced energy challenges and Obama has faced the largest oil spill disaster in our nation's history and both very publicly installed expensive solar panels around the White House grounds in an attempt to push their environmental policy. Carter’s energy policy was a failure while Obama’s is failing.

Carter tanked in the polls and never came back and Obama has tanked in the polls and is about to get whacked in the midterm elections. Carter faced an economic “malaise” while Obama faces the worst recession since the Great Depression. Both are seen are economic incompetents.

We will know Obama has fully taken on Carter’s persona when he starts wearing sweaters and dumps the presidential limo for a Prius.

If Obama starts scheduling time on the White House basketball court, then the country should worry. Until then, though, I think the political effect of reinstalling solar panels on the White House roof will be negligible.

With weeks before the midterm elections, President Obama’s announcement about decorating the White House roof with solar panels is a weak attempt to bolster his base who are unhappy with his unfullfilled promise to push climate legislation. It is symbolism in a time when America’s citizens are looking for substance.

While trying to bridge the enthusiasm gap, duplicating today, what was a bold step 30 years ago, is merely a gesture that will not make either the left or the right happy and will ultimately leave President Obama looking as foolish as Jimmy Carter did in that old gray sweater.

The left had such high expectations of him. With control of the Senate, the House, and the White House, climate change legislation should have been easily passed. They were counting on it and were devastated when Harry Reid announced that cap-and-trade is dead. Then Obama announces they will do climate legislation in pieces, but with the obvious upcoming upset in Congress, it is unlikely there will be any real action on the climate change front. Hence, solar panels on the White House — leaving the left to ask, “Is this all you can do?” “Is that all there is?”

Meanwhile, the right has been unhappy with his poor choices and apparent impotence on the international stage. They look at the solar panels as one more “nice” gesture — like sitting down for tea with Ahmadinejad. The economy is in the toilet, jobless rates are on the rise, and our allies are turning against us. And Obama’s priority is solar panels? The right asks, “Is this all you can do?” Is that all there is?”

Thirty years from now, we’ll look back at this era much like we view Jimmy Carter’s single term today. We remember waiting in the long lines for gas while Jimmy was sitting by the fire in a sweater to save fuel. We wished he’d do something, take action. We will remember the long list of problems facing America while Obama decorated the White House with solar panels. Instead of symbolism, we will have wished for substance.

We’ll come to see the solar panels as a defilement to the sacredness of the White House — like a “save the whales” bumper sticker on a valuable, classic car. We’ll look for a president who, like Reagan, will take them off and restore American dignity and exceptionalism. Someone who can “do it.” We know there is more!

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